How Your Thoughts Bring You to the Ice-Cream Section

You’re at the grocery store in the produce section attempting to make good choices for your meal prep this week. Broccoli or kale. You look up and recognize the guy standing by the oranges. Dude from the sales department at work you’ve had your eyes on for months now. You make eye contact and you wave. But he keeps going; no acknowledgment of your greeting nor your existence and you suddenly feel a knot in the pit of your stomach. “WTF?”, “what did I do wrong?”, “Im not good enough for him to even acknowledge my existence apparently”, “it’s confirmed again, I’m just not likable”.  Down the rabbit hole you go. You throw the kale down and head straight to the ice-cream section and choose your beloved Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked. You’re home now. You proceed to eat it. All of it, and sit in your self-made painful feelings of inadequacy. What meal prep.

It’s fascinating to see how powerful our thoughts are in having the ability to take us to such challenging places in our minds. The above scenario is a basic example of this, and how the Cognitive Behavioral conceptual model applies - A situation occurs; any situation, whether its big, small, or medium, we as human beings always have to find some kind of interpretation or “automatic thought” behind said situation. This thought often times is inaccurate about that situation. But this thought proceeds by directly determining how we are going to emotionally feel, which in turn causes us to behave a certain way. It can go the other direction as well:

Situation: dude crush doesn't wave back 

Thought(s): “I did something wrong”, “Im not good enough to him” 

Emotion: sad

Behavior: forego meal prep and binge on ice-cream

All because of a thought. A THOUGHT! See how this worked? In a matter of seconds, your day to day functioning completely took a turn for the negative, disrupting not only your mood, but also your self worth and being able to accomplish your goals because of some distorted thinking on your part. Depending on how much you allow yourself to go down that rabbit hole, the consequences of negative automatic thoughts can often be debilitating.  This model comes from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), an evidence based psychotherapy who’s versatility reaches so many of us on many different fronts. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, or psychosis, this model can easily be applied and can literally change lives. 

I often tell my patients “you are not your thoughts”. Yet, this is much easier said than to have click. Thinking negatively about the self, others, and world is often a lifelong habit that has literally transformed the brain’s neural pathways. Our style of thinking often comes from our upbringing, and can also go very deep to our “core belief” system (more on “core beliefs” in future blogs!)  No surprise then how difficult it is to begin transforming your thought process to a much more accurate and positive one.  I can’t just tell you to stop feeling a certain emotion - “just don't be so sad”, “calm down”, “dont be so anxious all the time”, “just get over it”. How many times have you heard those gems of advice?!  CBT acknowledges that a person just can’t change how they feel. But what we can do is intervene with our thoughts and/or behaviors, which in turn transforms how we will emotionally be feeling in that moment instead.

The first step (and often most difficult) is to be aware in the moment of what you are actually telling yourself. It’s called an “automatic thought” for good reason - so often we aren’t even aware of what were are telling ourselves in a given situation, yet we experience quite strong emotional reactions and behaviors from it. Once you are able to catch yourself in that automatic thought, you begin implementing cognitive tools (these tools to be taught later) meant to undo and correct that thought. The Cognitive Behavioral framework has quite a large repertoire of tools that teach you how to break that cycle. Instead of feeling dejected and neglecting your meal prep with ice-cream binging, with a more accurate thought about the situation you have now continued on with the day, unaffected emotionally and engaging in healthier behaviors. Further, the more you practice this, the more you begin changing your style of thinking on a larger and generalized level in your life:

Situation: dude crush doesn't wave back 

REPLACED Thought(s): “He may not have seen me”, “he may be having a bad day”, “even if he isn’t into me, that in no way defines my worth or the rest of the people who value me in my life.”

NEW emotion: neutral

NEW Behavior: meal prep commences

If this sounds like you, then we can provide you the tools and support in showing you, step-by-step, how to create the career and life you want. I implore you to take that huge life step - book a call. On that complimentary call, we will work with you in deciding exactly what you want your life (and career) to look like: where you want to be, identify the biggest things holding you back, and a step-by-step plan to make it happen.